Arrival

This should be the end of my protracted youth

Where the drugs don’t work and my back hurts

And here’s the truth

This should be the start of my extended middle age

The settled end of rage

And my back hurts

But this is the start of the heart

Whose beating you can't rely on

Yes this is the place we prepared for

Like it or not

As soon as your snot

Has crisped in your mother's hands

You set off for this place

Only now you realise it’s not a race

But a sudden arrival at a place

You should have seen a mile off.

News

They’re dropping a desert here those winds

and no missing planes are found,

and the kids are in the park

or so I’ve heard, but I can’t go

to hold their hands or watch them tear

the dusty ground in pinching shoes.

and I’ve stopped watching the news,

because they never mention you,

nor do they ever help me see

the bits I can’t find in my reflection

the bits like you

And now with the TV off

the kettle on for benediction

and the milk running out

I wonder if the kids can hear me shout

above their laughing friends

But I hope they can’t

because this is not the way to go

it’s not the way we do it here;

to never see things through,

So I’ll see this through with you.

In the gap

There is a distance we leave between breath and word

Between breath and verse there is a distance

You pitched your tent there

Where in that distance I cooked up a book

A book you mistook for instructions

A book of maps, and curious odes

And illustrations of toads you took to be Darwin’s

Although it be know let it be known

They were mine those toads

Wrought of work, and fat of haunch

And deep did they squat, squat to be heard

In the distance

The distance between breath and word. 

Your fire engine

I remember you 
rattling down the hall

feet raised for speed,

tiny wheels turning fast 
your subtle play 

into something more,

an archetype perhaps; 

the child delighted,

but unique here with my joy too

seeing muscles hardening, 
pushing you inexorably up to 

this lofty complicated place;

the crash site of adulthood.

The trauma of growing,

like that of being born

is too much to remember

and better left in darkness,

but once all growing's done

and children come

the scorch marks of that crash

and a slow healing wound of the heart,

start something new

built of fear and love

like a soft but heavy beaten blow.

You're a big boy now

in that urgent emergent rush

to be done with all these

playful settled things

and I suppose I am 
the vanquished land of deposed kings.

Even as I wrestle your little limbs 

into the trunks they will become

I hope when you are me,

watching tiny wheels

produce ecstatic simple squeals,

that you will feel enough to know

there's one thing only a child's love can show;

we want our headlong rush 

into the emergency of life to slow
as we watch our small ones quickly grow.

First Breath

You breathe in waves

And the waves breathe too

As the moon shows her rhythms

So do you

The lunatics are out tonight

To dance on the crackling sand

I wake you up and take you there

Gently by the hand

And the waves take the beach

As the beach takes the trees

So I take you and you take me.

Somewhere in history

Another name is written down

A shape made in water

Atoms going round. 

Ante Post* for Annabelle

When we first saw you blink

taking in your lot 
not seeing us blink back,

only slightly less amazed, saying;

“yes, we are your lot”

And saying too;

“you drew well, we will keep your bets intact

show you the form and do our best to stack 
the odds, to help you judge the going

and to know in knowing
those rare arts of the thoroughbred,

no fence can fell you”

So when you run or jump

to take the bounds 
of every field we show you

beginning to wonder 

what’s in the next

or that one further yonder

for us, you can only win,

All Out for life now,

our bets are in.  

*betting on an event in the future